Thanks for reminding me why I stopped reading mainstream comics. There isn't a single character or comic from the 90s on--from either Marvel or DC--that is worth a nickel.

It's just an endless recycling of the same ideas that have been used over and over again.

I'll stick with 30s/40s DC, 60s Marvel, and some 80s stuff from both.

Of course, any chartacter might look great sculpted by the 4 horse-people, but that's besides the point.

Yeah, those Green Lanterns, they suck! They're just a ripoff of the Lensmen!

And that Batman? He's just the Shadow, he's nothing new.

Fantastic Four? They're lame, just a Challengers of the Unknown riff.

Superman? Hercules, Achilles and Samson. Been done before print!

And Elvis is just Chuck Berry, Nirvana's just the Pixies, The Ramones are just a sped-up Shangri-Las, the Violent Femmes are just the Modern Lovers, Yo La Tengo's just the Velvet Underground, The Replacements are Big Star without a shower, Jaws is just Moby Dick, Godard just makes gangster movies, Wong Kar Wai is just Godard, Cormac McCarthy is just Herman Melville and William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway is just Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn's just Tom Jones and Tom Jones is just Don Quixote, The Aeneid's just The Iliad, the English Romantics are just the Metaphysics, and Shakespeare steals old folk tales and is really just Christopher Marlowe anyway.

If they make good versions of Jack Knight Starman and The Shade (along with Fire and Ice), I think I could quit collecting completely, happy and fulfilled. Their DC Direct versions left a LOT to be desired.

Of course, I'd be all for a Wally West Flash too, considering DC Direct never made a perfect version.

I think as far as importance to the DC Universe, Oracle absolutely deserves to be made, but I have a great deal of trouble figuring out a way to make a normal woman in a wheelchair "Sell" to a store like Wal-Mart or Target. I hope we get her, but I also feel like she's got a much harder road to travel on the way to plastic compared to the rest of the list.

I really hope we see Kyle get some form of representation by Mattel, thus far all we've gotten is the one in JLU and that's only because they couldn't make Hal(*prays that comment doesn't open that can of worms.*) He and Parallax are both high on my list personally.

I know a lot of people will always hate the thought behind it, and it certainly wasn't planned this way, but I feel like if you look back now at Hal's progression from GL through everything until he became GL again, it is some of the most in depth development a major character has ever gone through that I can think of. It may have taken years to get back to this point, but I also think how anyone who writes for GL now has so many aspects of Hal's life they can explore, from the lingering emotions of his ordeal with Parallax to his time as the Spectre to his return to the mortal plane, in the end it has made him a very rich character, whether intentional or not.

_________________If there are 2 villains and 20 heroes, what do the heroes do all day? Talk about their prostate problems?

It sounds like you haven't read anything from the 90's. Or anything from the Silver Age or latter half of the Golden Age, even. The most amusing part is, the 30s/40s era of DC you value is a period where there was really no character development at all, so how do you value those basic characters over their successors, who have been much more developed and defined?

Thanks for reminding me why I stopped reading mainstream comics. There isn't a single character or comic from the 90s on--from either Marvel or DC--that is worth a nickel.

It's just an endless recycling of the same ideas that have been used over and over again.

I'll stick with 30s/40s DC, 60s Marvel, and some 80s stuff from both.

Of course, any chartacter might look great sculpted by the 4 horse-people, but that's besides the point.

Yeah, those Green Lanterns, they suck! They're just a ripoff of the Lensmen!

And that Batman? He's just the Shadow, he's nothing new.

Fantastic Four? They're lame, just a Challengers of the Unknown riff.

Superman? Hercules, Achilles and Samson. Been done before print!

And Elvis is just Chuck Berry, Nirvana's just the Pixies, The Ramones are just a sped-up Shangri-Las, the Violent Femmes are just the Modern Lovers, Yo La Tengo's just the Velvet Underground, The Replacements are Big Star without a shower, Jaws is just Moby Dick, Godard just makes gangster movies, Wong Kar Wai is just Godard, Cormac McCarthy is just Herman Melville and William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway is just Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn's just Tom Jones and Tom Jones is just Don Quixote, The Aeneid's just The Iliad, the English Romantics are just the Metaphysics, and Shakespeare steals old folk tales and is really just Christopher Marlowe anyway.

I think you misunderstood my point. I said the ideas are unoriginal. Let's take a random example: Batman has clashed with the Joker how many times? At least 200. How many of the stories actually added something meaninful to the development of either character? Ten? And how many from the last 15 years?

Regarding your list of comparisons, I have two problems. One, I would diagree that the pairs of characters you give are all that similar.

Batman and the Shadow have a couple of similarities, but there is a world of difference between the two.

The FF and the Challs? Come on. Yes, Kirby created both, and there are, again, a couple of superficial similarities, but that's about it. The FF are their world's greatest superheroes--the Challs are four regular dudes.

The last comparison with Superman and the 3 figures from myth is the weakest example of all. Other than the fact that all 4 are physically strong, Superman has almost zero in common with the rest.

My second problem is that let's assume you had two very similar characters. It's still possible to tell original, creative stories with whichever one came second. But that's not what modern mainstream comics deliver. It's just the same characters in the same situations with the same plots over and over again.

Your list of non-comic examples is too long to discuss in detail. But I never claimed anything like the examples you give.
Here's how I see it:
Elvis was clearly influenced by Berry. But he's not a copy. Someone singing Berry covers, in the same style, with the same arrangements, is a copy--and therefore completely useless.

That's how I see mainstream comics today. You have artists that never really learned to draw. They just copied the artists they grew up reading until they reached the point that they could somewhat competently reproduce what those earlier artists did.

I'll stick with the originals.

_________________insanity is like gravity--all it takes is a little push

It sounds like you haven't read anything from the 90's. Or anything from the Silver Age or latter half of the Golden Age, even. The most amusing part is, the 30s/40s era of DC you value is a period where there was really no character development at all, so how do you value those basic characters over their successors, who have been much more developed and defined?

I have read stuff from the 90s. Not a lot--that's true--but that's because everything I did pick up disappointed me. I owned a comic store from '89 to '91, so I did get exposed to the stuff--just wasn't impressed.

And what gives you the impression I haven't read a lot of silver age? I've owned and read nearly every issue of every major title from the period. I'm not sure how that's relevant, though.

With regards to the 30s/40s DC stuff, let me try to be more clear. Most of those comics were complete crap--just like most of the comics from any period. I certainly didn't like all of it. But at least you had people who were creating new characters. And two of them were Superman and Batman. There's a reason those two became the icons they are today--they were inspired creations. Do you really suppose that 50 years from now people will still be reading about Cable or Impulse?

And there was character development during the period. It wasn't particularly impressive--but that's never been a strong suit for mainstream comics. It still isn't.

_________________insanity is like gravity--all it takes is a little push

I think you misunderstood my point. I said the ideas are unoriginal. Let's take a random example: Batman has clashed with the Joker how many times? At least 200. How many of the stories actually added something meaninful to the development of either character? Ten? And how many from the last 15 years?

Regarding your list of comparisons, I have two problems. One, I would diagree that the pairs of characters you give are all that similar.

Batman and the Shadow have a couple of similarities, but there is a world of difference between the two.

The FF and the Challs? Come on. Yes, Kirby created both, and there are, again, a couple of superficial similarities, but that's about it. The FF are their world's greatest superheroes--the Challs are four regular dudes.

The last comparison with Superman and the 3 figures from myth is the weakest example of all. Other than the fact that all 4 are physically strong, Superman has almost zero in common with the rest.

My second problem is that let's assume you had two very similar characters. It's still possible to tell original, creative stories with whichever one came second. But that's not what modern mainstream comics deliver. It's just the same characters in the same situations with the same plots over and over again.

Your list of non-comic examples is too long to discuss in detail. But I never claimed anything like the examples you give. Here's how I see it:Elvis was clearly influenced by Berry. But he's not a copy. Someone singing Berry covers, in the same style, with the same arrangements, is a copy--and therefore completely useless.

That's how I see mainstream comics today. You have artists that never really learned to draw. They just copied the artists they grew up reading until they reached the point that they could somewhat competently reproduce what those earlier artists did.

I'll stick with the originals.

No, I get your point just fine, humorless and pedantic as it is. You're saying, for example, Kyle Rayner or Connor Hawke are exactly the same as their predecessors. Which you know thanks to your magical psychic powers, what with never condescending to read any comics beyond your arbitrary golden eras and all. I take the position that while they were heavily inspired by the previous works, they are quite distinct, just like Elvis & Chuck Berry, or any of those other examples. Much like the four comic book examples I mentioned - the Challs WERE the dry run for the FF, make no mistake; Batman was the marriage of the pulp tradition with superheroics (and saying that there's nothing significantly similar between him and The Shadow, or say, The Spirit, is quite frankly stupid); Superman is a modern expression of the classic heroic tradition (and if you don't see the ways he mirrors those ancient examples, you haven't studied enough mythology); and the GL Corps was heavily inspired by the Lensmen and classic sci-fi in general.

So, take Connor Hawke. How is he different from Oliver? Oliver's in the Errol Flynn-Robin Hood-Alexandre Dumas swashbuckling tradition, a distinctly Western European and early Hollywood conceit. It's the stuff Twain was making fun of in the final third of Huck Finn. But Connor's obviously inspired by Asian mythology, the Buddhism that the character himself practices, and kung fu pulps & movies. And their personalities are strongly representative of those differences. Now, Roy becoming Red Arrow? THAT'S a direct copy.

Kyle Rayner? They gave an ARTIST a MAGICAL WISHING RING. Hal, Guy or John don't have that, even with John's architectural background. Suddenly, an entirely different property of the GL ring is opened up for story potential. Granted, Johns seems to downplay that side of the ring in his stupid rainbow cosmology in which everyone is allotted one emotion apiece, but he's also legitimately entrenched in the past. Morrison always understood it well enough when he wrote JLA.

Here's what I don't get - you don't even seem able to spot patterns and archetypes among the characters you do read, but I'm supposed to take you seriously about the ones you don't?

Also, there's the irony of you complaining about copies of things when your name is Braniac Six. I mean, Brainiac 5 is just a legacy of Brainiac, right? They couldn't possibly be distinct characters, and Brainiac 5 couldn't possibly have any depth!

I think you misunderstood my point. I said the ideas are unoriginal. Let's take a random example: Batman has clashed with the Joker how many times? At least 200. How many of the stories actually added something meaninful to the development of either character? Ten? And how many from the last 15 years?

Regarding your list of comparisons, I have two problems. One, I would diagree that the pairs of characters you give are all that similar.

Batman and the Shadow have a couple of similarities, but there is a world of difference between the two.

The FF and the Challs? Come on. Yes, Kirby created both, and there are, again, a couple of superficial similarities, but that's about it. The FF are their world's greatest superheroes--the Challs are four regular dudes.

The last comparison with Superman and the 3 figures from myth is the weakest example of all. Other than the fact that all 4 are physically strong, Superman has almost zero in common with the rest.

My second problem is that let's assume you had two very similar characters. It's still possible to tell original, creative stories with whichever one came second. But that's not what modern mainstream comics deliver. It's just the same characters in the same situations with the same plots over and over again.

Your list of non-comic examples is too long to discuss in detail. But I never claimed anything like the examples you give. Here's how I see it:Elvis was clearly influenced by Berry. But he's not a copy. Someone singing Berry covers, in the same style, with the same arrangements, is a copy--and therefore completely useless.

That's how I see mainstream comics today. You have artists that never really learned to draw. They just copied the artists they grew up reading until they reached the point that they could somewhat competently reproduce what those earlier artists did.

I'll stick with the originals.

No, I get your point just fine, humorless and pedantic as it is. You're saying, for example, Kyle Rayner or Connor Hawke are exactly the same as their predecessors. Which you know thanks to your magical psychic powers, what with never condescending to read any comics beyond your arbitrary golden eras and all. I take the position that while they were heavily inspired by the previous works, they are quite distinct, just like Elvis & Chuck Berry, or any of those other examples. Much like the four comic book examples I mentioned - the Challs WERE the dry run for the FF, make no mistake; Batman was the marriage of the pulp tradition with superheroics (and saying that there's nothing significantly similar between him and The Shadow, or say, The Spirit, is quite frankly stupid); Superman is a modern expression of the classic heroic tradition (and if you don't see the ways he mirrors those ancient examples, you haven't studied enough mythology); and the GL Corps was heavily inspired by the Lensmen and classic sci-fi in general.

So, take Connor Hawke. How is he different from Oliver? Oliver's in the Errol Flynn-Robin Hood-Alexandre Dumas swashbuckling tradition, a distinctly Western European and early Hollywood conceit. It's the stuff Twain was making fun of in the final third of Huck Finn. But Connor's obviously inspired by Asian mythology, the Buddhism that the character himself practices, and kung fu pulps & movies. And their personalities are strongly representative of those differences. Now, Roy becoming Red Arrow? THAT'S a direct copy.

Kyle Rayner? They gave an ARTIST a MAGICAL WISHING RING. Hal, Guy or John don't have that, even with John's architectural background. Suddenly, an entirely different property of the GL ring is opened up for story potential. Granted, Johns seems to downplay that side of the ring in his stupid rainbow cosmology in which everyone is allotted one emotion apiece, but he's also legitimately entrenched in the past. Morrison always understood it well enough when he wrote JLA.

Here's what I don't get - you don't even seem able to spot patterns and archetypes among the characters you do read, but I'm supposed to take you seriously about the ones you don't?

Also, there's the irony of you complaining about copies of things when your name is Braniac Six. I mean, Brainiac 5 is just a legacy of Brainiac, right? They couldn't possibly be distinct characters, and Brainiac 5 couldn't possibly have any depth!

And did you misspell Brainiac, or are you just really into bran?

Wow, you seem like a really angry dude. But I guess I'll respond to your points--despite your lack of civility.

Humorless? That is the first time anyone has ever called me that. Everyone else on this site seems to think I joke around too much. I'm glad I'm so versatile.

Pedantic, huh? Consider me impressed by your dazzling vocabulary. But how exactly does it apply to what I wrote? It struck you as inordinately concerned with formal rules? What rules?

And you don't get my point. Your last post tried to make it about characters, so I clarified: The ideas and stories are tired. And yet, here you are again putting words in my mouth and still fixating on Kyle Rayner and Connor Hawke. And I have read comics from every era. How many issues of a given title must I read before I have your permission to stop because it sucks?

The Challs were a dry run for the FF? What does that mean? It's just a vague and empty statement. Have you read Kirby's run on both? They are a million miles apart.

Batman is the marriage of pulp tradition and superheroics? Who's being pedantic now professor? Even if we accept that statement, how does that demonstrate that Batman and the Shadow are similar. Neither character is defined by whatever "tradition" you would assign them. Superman and Batman are part of the same tradition but you wouldn't call them similar.
And calling someone stupid because they have a different opinion is childish. People resort to name calling when they can't support their argument.

You're right about one thing, I haven't studied enough mythology. It's crazy--especially since I teach courses in Greek mythology and Euripides.
Superman is nearly the exact opposite of the traditional heroic ideal. Greek heroes prized honor and fame above all else. Achilles sulked in his tent and was willing to let his fellow Greeks die all because Agamemnon had dishonoured him. He also agreed to go to Troy to ensure his everlasting fame. Does that sound like Superman? You know, the humble hero who couldn't care less about fame and fortune? The one who keeps his identity secret?

I'm not missing any patterns. You're just seeing patterns where there aren't any.

Brainiac and Brainiac 5 are not that similar--I agree. I just don't remember saying that two characters must be identical if their names are the same.

Braniac was a typo. After I noticed it, I kind of liked it so I stuck with it. And I wasn't trying to create anything with the choice. It's just the first thing that came to mind when I registered. But you're right--a screen name picked after 2 seconds of deliberation and bland, derivative, stories written by paid professionals are completely comparable.

_________________insanity is like gravity--all it takes is a little push